Dyna by candlelight.Three-fourths of Goodbye Dyna have gathered at the Source offices on a
Friday afternoon, all of them with the ruddy faces that can only mean
one thing on a sunny March day in Bend: they just got off the mountain.
The emerging local eclectic rockers admit that they've just finished up
their first ever "band day" at Mt. Bachelor - and this is just one of
several firsts Goodbye Dyna has chalked up as of late.

If you size up Goodbye Dyna against other local acts, it would seem
that this quartet has done everything backwards. Rather than earning a
following by slaving away in the bars for a couple years before
amassing enough material and resources to lay down some tracks in the
studio, Goodbye Dyna took a different route: they pretty much had an
album before ever playing a show. Well to say "they" is stretching it
to a degree, seeing as how front man Andrew Mowbray Jacobs played
almost all the instruments and produced the band's debut, XXVII, on his
own.

Jacobs, a veteran of the Central Oregon music scene, having previously played in Blame Amy, figured he'd lay down an album, and then let the band aspect follow.

"Almost every band I've ever been in, we'd work three years or more to make a great album and by the time the album comes out the band is sick of each other and breaks up," says Jacobs.

But the album was also a personal challenge for Jacobs. He began writing one song each month and planned to meld the tracks into an album, all of which he wanted to complete during his 27th year - hence the name of the title, for those of you who can decipher Roman numerals. And he met his goal, but just barely. He finished the project as the sun came up on his 28th birthday.

"I wrote all these songs over the course of a year and you can actually hear the seasons on the album," Jacobs says. He says that events like the presidential election and the dive-bombing economy also played a role in shaping the record.

XXVII is a true rock album that's drenched in the early '90s influences (the ghost of Layne Staley can be heard in Jacobs' vocals) that Jacobs says introduced him to rock music as a youth. But the album jumps around between genres, with some Floydian depth at moments and some Queens of the Stone Age crunchiness on tracks like "Setting Sun."

Drummer Jay Schmidt, previously known as a member of now defunct local experimental rock act Vihara, says Goodbye Dyna thrives on its ability to shift between genres. In fact, they plan to play some Irish-influenced tunes during their St. Patty's Day show at the Silver Moon as well as some killer covers, which I've been instructed to keep secret. Although the band has only existed in its current state for less than half a year (Tyler Moss and Dylan Alm round out the lineup) Goodbye Dyna is already booking shows out of town. They're playing at Dante's in Portland the day after their St. Patty's gig. From there, Schmidt describes a relatively unorthodox (albeit probably effective) touring approach.

"One of the things we've been talking about is trying to book shows in places where people have nothing to do. Instead of only trying to tag these saturated areas that are ridiculously hard to break into, why not go into K. Falls and play?" Schmidt says.

While they might be spending some time out of town, dropping their rock on these assumedly bored audiences, Goodbye Dyna should be around enough for you to get to know them. Or perhaps you'll see them on the mountain on another "band day."